Final Reaction

At first, one look at the book had me rolling my eyes and groaning from the amount of time I knew I would spend reading the next few weeks, and indeed I did spend some quality time with the book. I found this book to be unnecessarily long and at times very repetitive, but I found the message of the book to very insightful and Rand did a very good job mixing in a plot to a dramatic story to get her point across.

Although it was a long read, I dove in deep in some parts and actually enjoyed most of the book. The story was like a black hole that led you to a different end every time. Every character has somehow connected and all their actions affected one another. I liked reading about a hardship story that evolves into a love story combined with struggle and then gets mixed up with seven other different kinds of situations and makes the book seem really realistic and entertaining to read. I thought it was particularly interesting how this book was written in the late 1950’s, yet all the themes, all the ideas, all the concepts of the systems and the philosophy of the way people are as opposed to the way they should be, they’re all applicable to this time period as well. That shows that even if humans have the means and the right ideas, it may take more than fifty years to ever do anything about the way we do things or the way in which the government regulates the people and controls our mindset. I think this proves our inability to see what’s right in front us at times but we decide to ignore because the upper power neglects it. I also thought it was a funny coincidence that the government shut down while we were reading this book because it basically proved everything the book was trying to demonstrate, right.

From my understanding of the book, Rand is telling us that the government is corrupt and will always put a mask on, commit disgusting crimes against their own people, and always use the same excuse that it is all being done for the “common welfare.”

She is also telling us that, because we are the only country that was “made with the brain” by industrialist and intelligent leaders, the restrictions and limitations that lead to the modern industrialist’s termination are hypocritical to what this country stands for. Industrialists should be helped to expand and it should be promoted that business leaders be selfish and greedy and do everything for themselves rather than other people because man is a selfish creature, and so if we are made to think that we are doing our jobs for someone else rather than for our own benefit, then we will take the job lightly, reduce the quality, stop caring, and try to find a way to get someone to do your job for you. That’s the whole idea of looters. These people are snakes and vultures that first attack the successful industrialists with venom to weaken them and then  they feed on whatever they had and take whatever business they made a fortune on, claiming it to be unfair that one man would have so much power and other have nothing. This is a capitalistic society, there needs to be a difference in classes, if not, we’d become a communist country if we spread the wealth.

For the looter characters, I hated them all from the beginning. Jim especially because he was the biggest vulture with everything Dagny did that was good, but Dagny’s worst enemy whenever the public went against her. I got Rand’s message that “the people in Washington” are the people with power to take away companies from men, and their soul along with it, and that these people have their small circle of connections. These are the fable minded, the weak. The industrialists like Galt and d’Anconia and Rearden are the real heroes of this book. These type of men represent what the ideal American leaders should be. If men care for themselves and look after themselves, it will create competition, innovation, men will strive to be better. “No charity” and that’s why they succeeded, The book also showed that, as it happened to East Germany after WWII, West Germany got all the brain power and left the East to do nothing but plot on how to get back at the West for leaving them hopeless. So Galt’s Gulch represents the West, and when these men are taken away from society, it becomes complete havoc because the only people left are those who want to get free benefits and steal crumbs off of others.  

In the end, I liked the book. I thought it was an insightful read that may come in handy one day when my moral values are in question.